I decided to share some of my humble experiences regarding leadership for 3 purposes. Firstly, I really miss being a direct people leader and I would like to keep my invaluable memories fresh and note down my leadership learnings. Secondly, I have seen fantastic outcomes when a leader truly engages people’s hearts and minds to their work and when she helps them utilize their own potential. As a result of great leadership, it is magical to see fulfilment of individuals & team and to get the high impact on business outcomes. Lastly, people leadership is easy to talk about but not easy to execute, so there are not many great leaders around (As a disclaimer, I do not perceive myself as one of the great leaders neither, so I have been continuously learning and developing myself.)
If there are not many great leaders, how can we get sustainable business outcomes with engaged and passionate teams in constantly challenging business environment? Don’t you agree that lack of role model leaders is one of the most serious challenges of the business world?
On the other hand, good leadership is such a difficult one to measure so it is tough to improve…
Then I thought, what if we could find a math formula for great leadership, would that make it easier to understand it better by breaking down it into factors? It might even help us to “calculate” it. Perhaps being able to measure would help us improve leadership skills?
So, I came up with below and I would like to double click on all the parameters in my following articles, so I will keep the explanation brief in my first article. Please do not hesitate to challenge it and provide your perspective to strengthen it.
Leadership=
[Purpose *Communication + Care*Empathy + Assignment + Development *(Empowerment+ Trust + Enablement) *Recognition – Destructive Criticism] / (Micromanagement * Exclusiveness + Unfairness + Dishonesty)
Let me give a brief explanation of the formula and why some factors multiply each other, some are plus or minus. I turned it around and play with it many times and finally came up with this latest version. As said before, different viewpoints are welcome.
Brief Explanation of Math Formula for Leadership
Purpose *Communication…
The leader gets mission and vision of the company and downloads it for her function and then communicates the it to her people. She helps people to connect with the overall purpose and link it to their personal passion and strength. Finding purpose at work motivates and engages people. If she can create excitement for the purpose, she starts taking the people to the right direction with her. If she is a good communicator and able to inspire people towards the purpose, these two factors multiply each other. These two also brings the team members together and help them create a bond towards the mission.
… + Care*Empathy …
She values and accepts each individual as they are. She builds empathy with them and really understands who they are. In addition, she cares for them as individuals acknowledging their true selves and understanding what they are passionate about and what they are good at. Empathy and care multiply each other, and these are important factors to bring up the best in people.
… + Assignment…
With recognition and consciousness of people’s potential in her team, she chooses and assigns right people to right roles. She takes their strengths and aspirations into consideration while doing that. People connect with what they are passionate about and starts creating value.
…+ Development *(Empowerment+ Trust + Enablement) …
She coaches and helps people to develop with a proper development and career plan. People in her team know and understand which part of the puzzle they fill in and how significant their role is in the big picture. They engage to work together towards the purpose while developing themselves. She cares for their passion and development and gives constructive feedback for development.
She shows that she trusts them. She empowers people who are at the right level for the mission, of course taking their development journey into consideration. She enables them when they need, stands behind them when they fail, and removes the barriers on their way or if they are capable to do this, mentoring them to achieve this themselves. This includes resource allocation, helping to navigate within the organization for getting results or coaching them. Her coaching may include helping to remove her people’s insecurities.
… Development *(Empowerment+ Trust + Enablement)
Empowerment & Trust & Enablement multiplies the impact of Development. With more Empowerment Trust and Enablement, she will observe more development and that people become more passionate towards the mission because they feel a sense of achievement. I would like to call this part of the formula as “self-fulfillment”.
…Development *(Empowerment+ Trust + Enablement) *Recognition…
Then she recognizes success, celebrates this with the rest of the company. This might include helping their people to appreciate their own successes. Recognition is the ultimate multiplier for “self-fulfillment”. Passionate and good teamwork directed towards the purpose is finally highlighted, appreciated, and promoted.
– Destructive Criticism
If they fail or make mistakes, she does not criticize them, but she supports them and shows that they are in this together, stands behind them. If she criticizes in a destructive way, this comes as a minus, it will make a negative impact as a minus factor (Note that, I am not talking about constructive feedback about failures, it is of course necessary and as a part of “Development” factor).
[Purpose*Communication + Care*Empathy + Assignment + Development *(Empowerment+ Trust + Enablement) *Recognition – Destructive Criticism]
This top part of the formula is directly correlated with leadership.
/…
Now some factors that are inversely correlated with leadership:
/Micromanagement * Exclusiveness…
Keeping her people in shadow and excluding them from important meetings and information, especially regarding their own jobs, make people unaware of what is going on. They feel in the dark, unconscious about the big picture. Also, she does not get their inputs or involve them to anything, they feel more and more excluded. When this is combined with micromanagement, they multiply each other. People feel not valued and not able to do their own stuff when somebody is always on top of them. Micromanagement is horrible but when accompanied with exclusiveness, people do not stand any chance against it.
+ Unfairness…
She treats people in an unfair way with bad performance management. I include “lack of performance feedback” or “to avoid giving performance feedback” into “Unfairness”. Also, this is about assigning people to wrong positions, promoting people for wrong reasons. Especially if the unfair choices are because of her personal benefits, this creates a very toxic environment.
+ Dishonesty
Plus, if she does not have high integrity and isn’t honest to her people, these two adds up to each other. I think I do not need to elaborate how this would create mistrust.
/(Micromanagement * Exclusiveness + Unfairness + Dishonesty)
These together with micromanagement & exclusiveness make a division impact on leadership. These divide all her other efforts. She must be mindful about avoiding these factors to be able to utilize all the positives that she has achieved.
Leadership=
[Purpose *Communication + Care*Empathy + Assignment + Development *(Empowerment+ Trust + Enablement) *Recognition – Destructive Criticism] / (Micromanagement * Exclusiveness + Unfairness + Dishonesty)
If we can quantify these factors, we will be able to measure and then help to find solutions for leadership challenges. It might be used for self-assessment by leaders too. I thought about adding some coefficients to some factors. Because I thought, depending on the density of each factor, some might make bigger impact. Then I thought I should keep it simple.
Even with so many factors impacting one another, it became more obvious to me that being a good leader is certainly a tough row to hoe.
As I said, I had to keep the explanation brief in this article. My next articles will be about all these factors with more deliberate ideas about why I have chosen each mode of operation (+ */ -).
Important Notes:
- In this formula, I am neglecting “managerial duties” such as planning and organizing, job design etc. and “directive duties” such as building up the strategy. I want to focus on being a good people leader.
- This article does not include stakeholder management, collaboration with other functions with a consideration of wider responsibilities of a leader. I am only taking into “people leadership” into account. The other factors might be added to the formula, but this would be another article’s subject.
- In addition, this is about all levels of leadership, from first time manager, to managing managers to functional or business leadership levels. Of course, this might have some adaptation for different levels, but it is another article’s subject. I wanted to keep this one as simple as possible.
